I would like to re-suggest an old proposal of John T. Whelan:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/1998JulSep/0209.html
concerning ASCII art. It was to include it with an OBJECT (or anchor)
as a separate file with a mime type text/x-ascii-art.
The question what MIME type to use is related
to what should be the mimetypes of vector graphics
written in XML applications. (I.e., should it be text/xml or
image/xml; likewise maybe image/plain is appropriate
for ascii art.)
As new mime types for these vector graphic formats will be
recommended at some point, the ascii art type may be discussed
at the same opportunity at the appropriate W3C working group.
In my view this makes more sense than
the example in the techniques doc.
<SPAN class="smile" title="smiley in ascii art">:-)</SPAN>
As this example assumes that the browser
assigns semantics to class=smile.
Nir Dagan, Ph.D.
http://www.nirdagan.com
mailto:nir@nirdagan.com
"There is nothing quite so practical as a good theory."
-- A. Einstein